Students aim to beautify downtown
More than 50 members of Pi Kappa Phi fraternity helped with the project.
May 2, 2008
Pi Kappa Phi fraternity members freshman Kevin Ornduff, junior George Scholtz and sophomore Drew Dickherber scrub graffiti off of a city mailbox south of Broadway on Wednesday. Volunteers spent the afternoon cleaning up Flat Branch Park and removing trash and graffiti from downtown Columbia.
Pi Kappa Phi fraternity members scour Flat Branch Creek for garbage on Wednesday afternoon. The MU Office of Community Involvement hopes to hold cleanups more frequently in the future.
Junior Pi Kappa Phi fraternity member George Scholtz peels a poopdeth sticker off the back of a stop sign near Cherry Street in downtown Columbia on Wednesday. The graffiti removal and creek cleanup were part of National Volunteer Week.
Senior Megan Gore, volunteer coordinator for MU’s Office of Community Involvement, gives volunteers instructions before the Flat Branch Park cleanup on Wednesday. The event split volunteers into groups dedicated to either stream cleanup or graffiti removal.
Trash collected from Flat Branch Creek sits on a curb in bags waiting to be picked up after the cleanup on Wednesday. The Missouri Department of Conservation provided the reusable litter bags.
For most MU students, Columbia is a temporary home. But they still want their community to look nice.
The Pi Kappa Phi fraternity teamed with other MU students, Tiger Hour and the city of Columbia on Wednesday to help clean up the center area of downtown near Flat Branch Park. More than 50 Pi Kappa Phi members were present.
The participants broke into two groups: the “stream cleaner-uppers” and the “graffiti team.”
Volunteer Coordinator for MU’s Office of Community Involvement Megan Gore helps run Tiger Hour, a group that worked to organized the event.
“It’s a one hour a week, one day a week program,” Gore said. “It’s a new program this year. We organize service projects for students and organizations to volunteer with so they sign up and they come out. This is our last one, so it’s two hours long because it’s a bigger project.”
Gore said another initiative for the event was to prepare for the Mayor’s Challenge, a weeklong event organized by the city to encourage Columbia residents to use modes of transportation other than automobiles.
“They wanted to get downtown Columbia nice-looking for the kick-off event,” Gore said.
Gore said Tiger Hour has completed 346 hours of service among 173 students.
City of Columbia stormwater educator Mona Menezes was in charge of the “stream cleaner-uppers.” Menezes said cleaning up Flat Branch Park, which used to be a train depot, is not something that happened overnight.
“Flat Branch Park is an EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) cleanup site,” Menezes said. “It was highly polluted and there was a chance to turn a cleanup site that was urban into a welcoming place in our inner city. It was citizen led. It took more than a decade to get it done.”
Menezes said a goal was to get the area to look nice in time for the dedication of Flat Branch Park Phase II, which will occur on Saturday.
“They’ve made it into a real asset for the community,” Menezes said. “After all of these years of hard work, they are going to dedicate it. We just wanted it to look nice.”
Menezes said the park is something that must be worked on regularly.
“Unfortunately, people have to clean up the Flat Branch Creek fairly often because there is trash coming in faster than we are picking it up,” Menezes said. “People don’t understand the connection with storm drains and the stream. A lot of the cigarette butts we see are from the MU campus and from the bars in downtown Columbia.”
Menezes said a lot of people don’t understand how harmful to the environment it is to throw cigarette butts on the ground.
“People think they are made out of cotton, but they are made out of plastic,” Menezes said. “It stays around for 10 or 15 years. The wildlife thinks it’s their food. We’ve cut open fish and seen cigarette butts.”
The increase in littering is partly due to changes in society, Menezes said.
“This generation is the first generation that consumes food and beverages away from home,” Menezes said. “We consumed all of our food and water at a table. That’s why the creeks are now filled with cups and bottles. It’s a social change.”
Pi Kappa Phi president Ryan Meyer said his day on the “graffiti team” was very productive.
“We were divided up into five teams,” Meyer said. “They gave us five different zones of the district downtown. My group started at Flat Branch Park, and we went as far as Broadway and Tenth Street. We covered a lot of ground, and we removed a lot of graffiti off mailboxes, the side of building and stickers from a lot of lampposts.”
The fraternity’s reasons for participating were to help the community and erase negative stereotypes.
“We showed how we really avoid settling for being another Greek stereotype,” Meyer said. “When we were talking about service, we wanted to do something that wasn’t a competition. We were trying to do something to benefit the community. We want the community to be proud of the campus and the university.”
Meyer said he believes college students will help as long as they’re having a good time.
“I think college kids are more willing to help out than most people think they are,” Meyer said. “There’s something about volunteering that makes you feel good inside. When you get a big group of guys around, you can really tell you’re making a difference, and it’s fun too.”
Pi Kappa Phi member Ryan Pulkrabek spoke about doing service work at one of the fraternity’s chapter meetings. Pulkrabek said doing service work is a way to be a leader.
“We take a great deal of pride in leadership,” Pulkrabek said. “Our motto is ‘leaders by choice.’ The best way to show our leadership is to go out and do service work.”
Pulkrabek said that although Columbia isn’t his permanent home, it would be his home as long as he’s in college, and he wants to take pride in it.
“We have a membership basis of 70 guys, and there’s so much potential with that big of a group,” Pulkrabek said. “There’s only a few of us from Columbia, but we’re living here for four years, so it’s a great way to give back. It’s a great way to take leadership and make a positive impact.”
Pulkrabek said the work was good for the community as well as for bringing the fraternity closer together.
“On Mondays we all get together for chapter, but it’s a rarity to have 50 guys hanging out in our living room,” Pulkrabek said. “It was perfect timing because finals are coming up and it was a great time to just hang out. After all, that’s why we joined the fraternity.”
Pulkrabek hopes others will follow their lead with service work.
“We hope that other fraternities and sororities look to us as an example,” Pulkrabek said. “I believe that if others look at this as an example, there will be a great change at least around the center area of campus.”
Pi Kappa Phi member Jack Cunningham, who was part of the stream cleaning team, said it is nice to hear good things being said about fraternities and sororities.
“All too often, fraternities and sororities get negative condemnations for whatever reasons,” Cunningham said. “They are the ones that are stereotyped as those who party all the time and never study. It depends on the individual with what they do, but there are good things that fraternities and sororities do, and it’s good to get recognized for it.”
Pulkrabek said service work brings people together better than a party ever will.
“You can throw a million and one parties, but when you do something good for the community, you leave feeling so rewarded,” Pulkrabek said. “I wouldn’t exchange the experience for the world.”
Menezes said he hopes this is the start of much more student involvement with volunteer work.
“It goes to pride in your community,” Menezes said. “You don’t care for what you don’t know about. I was proud of those guys that wanted to be a part of the city that they live in and make the university proud of their contribution. It means a lot to me, especially to have college kids helping. It gives people of all ages the chance to make a difference.”
More May 2, 2008 Outlook Stories
- Fraternity sponsors political debate — Because it is still primary season, most political debate has been between members of the same party. But on Tuesday ...
- U.S. Senate ends McCain citizenship debate — Any concern over whether Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was eligible to run for president was put to rest Wednesday in ...
- Independent press is no more — Hillary doing shots. Barack drinking orange juice. And do you know which one might or might not have given the ...
- Students aim to beautify downtown — More than 50 members of Pi Kappa Phi fraternity helped with the project.
- Citizen Oversight Committee reviews data — In the first of a series of analytical meetings Thursday, the Citizen Oversight Committee reviewed several sets of data regarding ...
Most recent Outlook Stories
- Columbia soldier's funeral held on Tuesday — Steven Fitzmorris, a Columbia soldier, was remembered during his funeral on Tuesday.
- Few Gustav evacuees take shelter in Columbia — A solid 790 miles separate New Orleans and Columbia. But when Hurricane Gustav threatened Louisiana with what some feared was ...
- PedNet programs encourage biking — </i>
- Same-sex marriage: election issue — Same-sex marriage will be a hot ballot issue in upcoming elections.</i>
- Guideline to help with earwax impaction — Listen up: Formal instructions for ear care have arrived.The American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Foundation released the first ...